This is plain wrong. Right China have more industrial power than any other country, in some key areas (steel production) - even more than all other world combined. That could allow China to bring more cheap "mobilization" weapons than any other country. (And yes, F-22 and Abrams are USELESS here as mobilization weapons!) Some here with f.e. chemicals - although Germany is world-leading in bringing and researching new chemicals - it have much less raw industrial power to produce cheap, disposable chemicals needed for simple all-around explosives used in most common bombs, shells, etc.
Of course, given few years, West will easely match China's industrial power in that areas. The only problem - we discuss mobilization here. I.e. timeframe is from months to 1-2 years at most. In that time China will have sizeable advantage.
This is also very one-sided view. Of course, in the very long run USSR couldnt hope to fully match West - after all, West had more human resources.
But in mobilization terms - i.e. 1-2 years at most - WP (USSR especially) had huge advantage in military industrial power. Huge. Most military and civilian factories were build and maintained with mobilization possibility in mind - and WP could relocate they production to military needs literally in several weeks.
Add to that much large stored strategic reserves (both in military equipment and raw resources) - and you will see why "Red Hordes" were nightmare for West.
The transformation of a peacetime economy to a war time economy capable of producing weapons and material critical to maintenance of a protracted engagement is a more critical factor than mobilized manpower, particularly in the 21st Century weapons bring to the table disproportionate killing power in a conventional battle (one has assumed we are not discussing asymmetrical warfare here).
The 'Red Hordes' you mention are no different to the 'Red Hordes' thrown against Germany in the latter years of WWII. Critical to their ability to destroy the fighting ability of the German army was due to the industrial support provided by the US and delivered via the arctic convoy system. Whilst we love to talk about the T34 and Russian artillery systems as battle winners we must also remember that the majority of trucks keeping the latter supplied in the field were built in the US. Today the US still maintains the largest defense and R&D industrial base in the world regardless of the credit crunch, no other country can produce decisive weapons on the same scale.
The bigger the 'horde' the bigger the supply chain. Mobilizing a million men and handing them a rifle is one thing but keeping them supplied, fed and watered is the real challenge. You mobilize a million men, give each one an AK and one 30 round magazine, thats 30 million rounds drawn from stores, which have to be replaced and fed into the logistics chain. Moving a million men from A to B is a huge challenge, not many countries have the ability to do this outside their own borders.
Yes China's economy is growing experientially, but it is still driven by its ability to manufacture low-tech goods and export them to the global market place. If a war broke out between the West and China and the West stopped buying cheap products from the latter and instead bought from the old Eastern Block countries and/or Vietnam how would China sustain its current economic growth and fund a war economy? At the end of the day China is not a high-tech leader, there's nothing it currently produces, which can't be purchased/made elsewhere (at a higher cost maybe). At this point in time China still needs to buy / import proprietary equipment/knowledge from the West/Russia, most medium/high-tech industries I've come across in Southern China, Shozhou for example are still JV or 80-90% foreign owned ventures aligned with Japanese, Taiwanese, European or US Companies.
I accept China has huge financial reserves, but these would soon be eaten up as they tried to ramp up their own military industrial base and invest in high-tech weapons from Russia to fill any shortfalls. If you look at both WWI & WWII the US economy actually grew unlike that of Germany's and the UK's, due to the fact that its industrial base produced ordinance and material for the free world, this will likely happen again in a future conflict.
Also China suffers from a critical lack of natural resources, it may be the largest steel producer in the world, but it has to rely on imports of iron ore from Australia. In fact Australia supplies China with most of the critical minerals required for the manufacture of alloys, so take Aus out the loop and China's in deep trouble having to source raw materials elsewhere? Now they could turn to Africa, but the continent suffers from a poor infrastructure, plus China would have to maintain it's own lengthy convoy system to escort merchant shipping to the mainland.
No country is totally self-sufficient in natural resources (Canada and Australia come close), which means supply chains need to be secure. This lack of access to key resources was the main reason why the German petrochemical industry is now best and most advanced in the world, they had to turn to science to create substitutes for almost everything from explosive compounds, rubber to and synthetic fuels.
